


A Ladder of Driftwood

by the_rck



Series: Not Ready to Swallow Oblivion [7]
Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Gen, Villain Warren Peace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 10:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15839370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: Will and Warren talk. Once again, Warren is terrible.Stronghold’s lips pressed together in a line that was very near ruler straight. “Shower. There’s a new toothbrush in there.” He turned and walked to the threadbare armchair in the corner. He didn’t turn as he said, “Don’t run. You’re too damned hungover to ignite, and I’m not sure I’d stop after I kneecapped you.”Warren told the truth. “None of them would forgive me if I hurt you.”Stronghold gave a wrenching laugh. “I think you’ve already done everything you can in that direction.”Warren didn’t manage to parse that until after he’d run icy water over his head for a while.Warren had taken Stronghold’s friends and Stronghold’s parents. Warren had what he had because Will Stronghold didn’t.





	A Ladder of Driftwood

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Z.G. Tomaszewski's "Becoming an Astronaut."
> 
> Thanks to Karios for beta reading.
> 
> This branches from the darker arc between "From the Chalice of Their Common Need" and "Who Have Waited for Water." I think it may end up happier for the world than some other options, but good heavens, this version of Warren is a manipulative shit.

For a long time, Warren thought that Layla would use him as muscle when she finally made her move. He’d be good at that. It wouldn’t bother him. He wouldn’t hesitate, and he could take most of the other supers out there. Not Layla, of course, but if Warren did it, she wouldn’t have to.

Eventually, though, he started to grasp how much power Layla had. Realizing that her power, both her strength and the range of things she could manipulate, was still growing-- She wasn’t going to need him, and he couldn’t guarantee that she’d want him, either. When he admitted that to himself, about four years in, he went downside alone and got very, very drunk. He was pretty sure, after, that he’d killed people during the bender, but he never checked. 

All the people who mattered had been a long way away. That had been part of the point.

The key to drinking seriously was pacing. There was a certain threshold point when his body would start burning out the alcohol. If he wanted temporary oblivion, he needed to get close to that line without crossing it. The problem was that oblivion meant vulnerability.

So Warren wasn’t completely surprised when he awakened three days later in a grungy hotel room with Will Stronghold looking down at him. 

Stronghold offered Warren a glass of water. “You probably need this.”

Warren’s headache and the way his throat felt told him that Stronghold was probably right, but he wasn’t stupid, so he hesitated.

“I haven’t told anyone you’re here,” Stronghold said. “I should, but my priorities are fucked up enough to put keeping my friends safe over putting you in prison.” He looked tired for a fraction of a second. “If the heroes take Sky High, Magenta and Zach will certainly go to prison, too.” His expression said that he knew Magenta wouldn’t survive to get to prison, not any more than Warren would.

Zach would live. He had the right family connections, and everybody knew all he could do was glow.

Most people forgot that Ethan and Layla existed at all, and they had family connections, too.

Warren managed to get himself close enough to sitting to take the glass. He downed it without any further hesitation.

“We’re not friends.” Stronghold took the glass back and walked toward the front of the room. “We never will be. I just don’t want to see what Layla’d do to keep them safe.”

Warren didn’t say anything until Stronghold came back with the glass full of water again. He drank then said, “You knew.”

Stronghold’s laugh was only a little bitter. “We ran around together in diapers. It’d have been hard not to.” He moved out of the way as Warren staggered toward the bathroom. “I’m not going anywhere. Shower if you think it’ll help.” Stronghold shrugged when Warren glanced back at him. “Alcohol does damn all for me, so I’m not sure what works, after. On the plus side, I can eat all the poisoned banquets I want to.”

Warren went very still for a moment. “She might not be able to kill you.” He shook his head as he realized he shouldn’t have said that.

Stronghold looked as if Warren had just confirmed his most terrible suspicions.

Which Warren supposed he probably had.

Stronghold’s lips pressed together in a line that was very near ruler straight. “Shower. There’s a new toothbrush in there.” He turned and walked to the threadbare armchair in the corner. He didn’t turn as he said, “Don’t run. You’re too damned hungover to ignite, and I’m not sure I’d stop after I kneecapped you.”

Warren told the truth. “None of them would forgive me if I hurt you.”

Stronghold gave a wrenching laugh. “I think you’ve already done everything you can in that direction.”

Warren didn’t manage to parse that until after he’d run icy water over his head for a while.

Warren had taken Stronghold’s friends and Stronghold’s parents. Warren had what he had because Will Stronghold didn’t.

Realizing that Stronghold probably _could_ kneecap him didn’t make walking out of the bathroom any easier. Opening the door got harder when he looked at his discarded clothing and decided that he wasn’t willing to let any of it touch his skin again. The hotel’s towels were thin and not really long enough to wrap around his waist.

There was no way Stronghold hadn’t thought about all of that. Stronghold was making a point about power. Stronghold couldn’t keep Warren long without risking his friends, but he could certainly hurt Warren, humiliate Warren.

Warren was almost certain that the hurting part-- the physical part-- wasn’t actually on the table here. Warren knew he would crawl for Layla, eventually; would he crawl for Stronghold?

That was different. Warren loved Layla.

But Layla still loved Will Stronghold. So did Zach. They’d loved Stronghold longer than they’d loved Warren.

They loved Warren. They did. They didn’t want to, but they did. That might even keep Warren alive in the long term.

Eventually, Warren wrapped a towel as much around himself as it would go and opened the door. He stepped out and walked to the bed. Once there, he sat with the towel draped over his lap.

Stronghold’s expression didn’t flicker.

“When she wants it,” Warren said, “I’ll crawl for Layla. Be damned if I’ll do it for you.”

“You think she will want it.” Stronghold closed his eyes for a moment.

“I love them.” Warren knew it wasn’t any sort of defense.

“I know that,” Stronghold said. “I’ve seen Zach’s letters. Naomi copies them for me. I read Layla’s first letter, but Mr Williams asked me not to, after. He’s afraid that me reading them might mean not getting more.”

“It might have before this.” Warren waved to indicate the walls around them. He offered Stronghold a smile sharp enough to cut glass. “I can extend courtesy for courtesy.”

Stronghold nodded. “If--” He took a deep breath. “If I didn’t think you loved them, I wouldn’t have been here when you woke up.” He studied Warren’s face. “You know that takes away some of what protects you from me, right? You won’t hurt them if I punch you. You won’t hurt the kids, either.”

Warren looked away because he wouldn’t, not if he could avoid it. “I have a reputation to maintain.”

“Yeah, I suppose you do.” Stronghold sounded disapproving. “You really are a piece of work.”

“I haven’t pretended to be anything else, not since Homecoming.” Warren still didn’t want to look at Stronghold, but he made himself meet the other man’s eyes. “None of them want to tell me anything about you, and I… don’t ask. You’ve been low-profile.” Surprisingly so for someone with Stronghold’s power set. “I only know what’s made the news.”

“And you haven’t made any move to grab more territory.” Stronghold’s eyes narrowed.

Warren shrugged. “I have everything I want.”

“Yeah. That’s why you went on a multi-day bender.” Stronghold sounded unimpressed.

Warren considered that. “Layla’s still getting more powerful,” he said after about thirty seconds of silence. Who was Stronghold going to tell? Warren looked at his hands. “I’ve never heard of a super who can do what she can. She doesn’t tell me, but-- Whatever else you may think, I’m not stupid, and she told me years ago that she wasn’t sure she was human any more, that that was what I’d done to her.”

Stronghold didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “You left that as the best of her options.” He didn’t sound as if he had any doubts about it.

“She’s not killing people to protect me. Except in as much as protecting me keeps the others safe.” Admitting that hurt. “I don’t know what’ll push her over, but I’ve known since before my mother died that something would. I just… My mother really, really had to die.”

Stronghold shifted in his chair, and it creaked.

“My mother wasn’t anything like yours,” Warren said once he realized what the problem was. “She wasn’t like—“ He shook his head. “She wasn’t brave or smart, and she didn’t like working hard. Mostly, she looked pretty and made other people do anything difficult. She wanted the world, and I was supposed to give it to her. She could have gotten it herself, but—“

Warren thought his sidekicks understood this part of what his mother had been. He just hadn’t ever said it out loud. He sighed. “I’d do it again. They all know that. I couldn’t— can’t— change anything before Homecoming. After—“ He shrugged. 

“Bullshit,” Stronghold said. “Not the can’t, not unless you’ve got time travel. And, if you do and chose this, I will snap your fucking neck and cope with the fallout.”

Stronghold could do it, too.

Warren started laughing. “You sound like Magenta.”

“Do I?” Stronghold sounded thoughtful.

“Well, her threats usually involve knives, but… yes.”

“And you think Layla’s going to torture you. I’d call it kinky, but that part isn’t sexual, is it?” Stronghold sounded as if he actually knew what he was asking.

Warren started to answer then hesitated. “Magenta didn’t go to Stockholm.” He wasn’t sure Stronghold would understand. Magenta had stopped somewhere well short of Stockholm, possibly somewhere mid-Atlantic, somewhere cold enough and wet enough that Warren couldn’t touch her.

“How much did you hurt them?” The words were quiet, but there was more threat in Stronghold’s question than in anything else the other man had said or done since Warren woke up.

Warren didn’t generally let himself look at that part, so he fixed his eyes on the ragged curtain behind Stronghold and tried to decide what color it was. It was too yellow to be beige. “I thought I was offering something better.” He hadn’t, not really, but almost.

Stronghold snorted disbelief, and Warren wondered what Stronghold had expected to hear. “How much did you hurt them?” he repeated.

Warren shrugged because it really wasn’t quantifiable. “Physically? Not much. I had to do something public when they tried to take me hostage. Just trying to escape wouldn’t have been-- It wouldn’t have needed that.” He wasn’t going to mention Ethan. Getting back to Sky High would be easier if Stronghold didn’t pulverize him first. “I didn’t want to, but… It’s never been terrible, burning people. Except them. I didn’t expect that to upset me.” He made himself meet Stronghold’s eyes. He spread the fingers of his right hand wide, then clenched his fist. “That’s when I knew that I--” He wasn’t sure he could say the words.

“I don’t give a single flying fuck how you _felt_ ,” Stronghold said. “Tell me what you _did_.”

Warren tried to look like he couldn’t believe that Stronghold needed that part explained. “I burned them.” He used the slightly exaggerated patience with which Magenta would have said something when she thought the listener was being deliberately slow. “It had to be showy, public, painful, and personal. Even then, I had control enough for that. When I wanted it.”

Something in the arm of Stronghold’s chair snapped as his grip tightened.

Warren pretended he hadn’t noticed, that it didn’t make his stomach clench. “It was December after Homecoming. If they hadn’t tried to take the babies, they’d have been gone.” He wondered if Stronghold hitting him would hurt as much as Layla’s poison had.

Stronghold made a choked sound as if he’d been going to speak and stopped himself. After several seconds, he said, very evenly, “I really would like to gut you. Slowly.”

“You could. If you were willing to pay for it.” Warren smiled because he understood this part of the game.

Stronghold went very still, even his expression flattened. “Are you that sure or are you gambling?”

Warren managed not to flinch at the last word. “I don’t gamble any more.” People he loved depended on it.

And Stronghold was going off script.

Stronghold raised his eyebrows. “I tracked you through fourteen bars, Battle. Fourteen. You left a trail obvious enough that my father could have followed it blindfolded. I had to fucking _cover_ for you.”

Warren winced.

Stronghold really, really sounded like Magenta.

Who actually might gut him for taking off the way he had.

Trying to shift the ground, Warren said, “They’re both cute kids. Your parents, I mean.” He smiled because they really were. “I switched all of the names, so even Ethan doesn’t know who’s who.” 

If Warren failed to reset the timer, after a month, Ethan’s sister would get a list. She might or might not pass it on. Warren just thought that she was the one most likely to be both findable and alive.

“Why?”

It was the question Warren expected, but something about Stronghold’s response was off. Warren frowned as he tried to figure it out. “My diaries say your mom used to give me candy. I don’t remember it, but it was a kindness.” It was a lie. Mostly. The part about the diaries anyway. If Jetstream had given Warren anything at all, Warren’s mother would have taken the memory before Warren had time to record it.

But Diana-- the little girl who had been Josie Stronghold-- seemed like the sort of person who would do that. Some day. When she was grown again.

Stronghold relaxed minutely.

Warren almost couldn’t breathe. He hadn’t really expected confirmation. 

There weren’t many ways Stronghold could have known about Warren’s mother’s power and how she’d used it on Warren, but the man in front of Warren was sharp enough to have caught the implications and asked if he didn’t already know.

Just not quite sharp enough to realize that he ought to ask anyway because there wasn’t any other way he could know.

Warren wondered which of his sidekicks was talking to Stronghold. How was less of a question because there’d always been holes in Sky High’s security that way. He supposed it didn’t really matter because he wasn’t going to do anything about it. He wasn’t willing to torture any of them again. He didn’t want to, and, even if he’d been willing, doing it would push Layla over a cliff edge.

Warren really didn’t want to deal with what would happen when Layla decided he was a liability or when one of the other three told her they thought he was. He’d have to face it eventually, but he didn’t want to. He also couldn’t bear to do any of the things that might save him.

Warren could push Layla to madness at any point. He understood enough about her to be able to do that. It just would require hurting the people they both loved. Saving his own hide wasn’t worth that. Maybe it had been once, but it really wasn’t ever going to be again.

Some days, he thought that he wanted the axe to fall just so he’d know how bad it would be, but mostly, he wanted more time before he lost everything.

Stronghold could certainly buy Warren time.

Warren didn’t understand enough about Layla to make her forgive him. She wouldn’t hold anything he’d done to her against him, but she wasn’t going to forgive him for Zach or for Ethan. And all three of them thought that what he’d done to Magenta was worse than what he’d done to the rest of them.

Magenta disagreed, but Warren rather thought the other three were right. 

Still, Layla probably wasn’t bulletproof yet. Ethan was, more or less, but Layla’d probably go down with a headshot. She probably couldn’t fly yet, either, so blowing up a bus was a possibility. That could even look like someone else attacking Warren.

But Warren would have lost Layla. 

And the other three would guess anyway, so, if Warren killed Layla, he’d have to be willing to sacrifice the others, too. And the kids. Without the other four, Warren couldn’t raise those kids as anything but the sort of monster he was. Twenty four kids like that would rip him-- and each other-- to pieces.

Supervillain Layla would still protect the kids from that part.

Warren took a deep breath and stepped off his own figurative cliff edge. “You might be able to visit.”

Stronghold looked suddenly very wary, as if he was realizing the trap Warren was setting.

“Secretly,” Warren said. He was pretty sure that Stronghold knew it was already too late. The other man just wasn’t ready to admit it yet. “I don’t think either of us can afford people knowing. I also think… The payment for access is something you want anyway.” He looked down at his hands as if he was ashamed, as if he hadn’t figured out, by six months in, what he was risking and gone on anyway. “I… cracked something inside Layla’s mind. I’m not the only one who’ll be in trouble when that snaps completely.”

Stronghold inhaled sharply. “I’m not going to stop her from kicking your sorry ass off the edge of the island. I’ll applaud and record it for posterity.”

Warren forced a laugh and knew it sounded forced. “Yeah, actually, you will stop her. Because not stopping her would be bad for all four of them. The rest of us, too, but you don’t care about that part. Killing me takes Layla across a line that’s almost not there any more. She hasn’t ever killed anyone she knows, and to kill me, she’d have to kill a lot of people she knows. She’ll have to go full on villain. Everyone she’s killed so far has been a direct threat to the kids. If she hurts me when she doesn’t have to, it’ll be because she’s become the sort of person who would. Think about who else she might get pissed at. Or already be pissed at.”

Stronghold looked like he’d bitten into something rotten, so Warren was pretty sure he understood. “You’d deserve it. Every damned second.” There was such toxic loathing in Stronghold’s voice that Warren was a little surprised either of them could breathe.

Warren shrugged. “I can’t stop her without destroying all four of them. I can’t. I love them, and I won’t do that, so it’s up to you. You might manage it, either stopping them from going villain or-- well. If you’re as smart as I think you might be.” Warren was almost certain that Stronghold wouldn’t be able to bring himself to kill Layla and the others, either, but Warren might be wrong because Stronghold was more complicated than he’d expected.

Now, Warren wondered how much of who Stronghold had become was Warren’s work, too. Layla would probably add that to the tally, but it meant that Stronghold might understand enough to be able to help all of them. Warren would suffer most if Stronghold couldn’t pull it off, but the other four-- None of them had ever wanted to be what they were going to become.

“They were so beautiful-- still are--” Warren said softly. “The four of them together, I mean, even before Homecoming. It was…” He raised a hand as if trying to grasp something ephemeral. He was pretty sure that Stronghold would both know that Warren wasn’t lying and know that Warren was trying to manipulate him. “I wanted them, who they were then. Who I thought they were. Then who they really are. It was stupid. I should have known they’d have teeth.”

Warren had known. He’d also known that his mother wouldn’t realize which had meant that Warren might, for once, get what he wanted. He wondered if Stronghold would understand that part if Warren tried to explain it.

Stronghold probably wouldn’t care. Nobody else did.

Stronghold stood. He gave Warren a look of scathing contempt that told Warren he’d won his point.

As if it hadn’t already been certain. The only currently unsettled question between them was whether or not Stronghold was going to beat the shit out of Warren before letting him go. If Stronghold did, Warren wasn’t going to hold it against him. He’d probably do it if their situations were reversed.

Warren wasn’t a hero. He never would be. He was starting to suspect that Will Stronghold wasn’t one either, not the way the Commander and Jetstream had been.

Stronghold would probably live longer and get farther than his parents ever had.

“I suppose I’d better find you some clothes.” Stronghold sounded very, very tired.

Warren smiled. “That would be really damned nice.”


End file.
